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Cliff-top residents have been advised to move out as the council says it will not be able protect their homes from landslides.
Almost 10 weeks after a huge collapse at Surf Crescent in Eastchurch, Sheppey, swallowed up a family bungalow, two families have been told they ought to leave as soon as possible because more is expected to fall.
Ed Cane and his wife Lynn received a ‘hazard notice’ last week, as did their neighbour Christine Green and her family. It said they were able to return home - after spending weeks in temporary accommodation - but at their own peril.
Mr Cane said: “The cliffs can go at any time. Swale council is not going to intervene, they are just going to let it carry on falling and the only advice they can give is for us to find somewhere else to live, which is not easy to do when you are 66 and have put all your savings into the property you were expecting to end your days in.”
Mr Cane was told if the cliffs were to erode any more, the council could then put a prohibition order on his home, which means he cannot be there, or a demolition order, and that he may qualify for a £6,000 grant to demolish his property.
“I feel sick,” he said. “I’ve been here 12 years, this was going to be my last home.
“I paid £80,000 for it, it was a derelict building. I had a new roof, new ceilings, new walls. Now we’re going to lose the lot because the council won’t do anything with the cliffs.
“I won’t be able to get a mortgage at my age. I haven’t got any option, I’ll have to stay here until the bungalow goes.”
He added: “I feel let down. I feel like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards these past 10 weeks.”
Mr Cane’s bungalow, in Third Avenue, backs onto Emma Tullett’s house, which fell over the cliff edge in May.
His neighbour Christine Green, 58, said: “Eventually they’ll have to serve us with a prohibition notice to get out.
“The council has given us paperwork showing where the three fracture lines are for our property.
“The caravan where my son Jason lives will go first and he has cerebral palsy. They think that will happen in a few months. Then in three to five years my house will go.
“The upsetting thing is that we bought this property in 2018 and no one told us this was going to happen. We knew about the cliff erosion but this wasn’t that, this has got to be due to a sinkhole.”
The May collapse prompted Swale council to commission a geotechnical survey to assess the cause and risk to nearby.
It found contributory factors were “sea erosion from below, and ground water from the top”.
It also said erosion in the area was not new and a non-intervention policy had been in place since at least 1996.
“Any meaningful intervention would be beyond the council’s means and would require support from government funding,” a spokesman added.
Cllr Tim Valentine, cabinet member for environment at the council, said: “Since the collapse, we’ve been working to support the households affected and gathering the best information and advice we can so we can help them make decisions about the next steps.
“We’ve been speaking to the families to keep them updated with developments, and have now issued hazard awareness notices to two properties outlining our advice.
“We will continue to work closely with the families to help them consider their next steps, as well as liaise with the wider community to manage the impact to their homes in the longer term."
He added: "The nature of the land here means that erosion will continue, and we expect more of the cliff to fall in the next few years, but we can’t predict with any certainty when that will be.
"So we have given residents advice on actions they can take, and we will support them as they make the difficult decisions they have ahead of them."
